


Attractive Dream Criminals Love Airlines (and other not exactly helpful bits of advice about love)

by slashmania



Series: 50 Thousand Words (from October to December!) [21]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, everyone else notices that Arthur and Eames are in love, everyone has choice advice for Arthur and Eames, most of that advice isn't helpful, see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:40:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21946735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmania/pseuds/slashmania
Summary: These are the times that everyone saw something that should have been fucking obvious to either Arthur or Eames.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Series: 50 Thousand Words (from October to December!) [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1503791
Kudos: 38





	Attractive Dream Criminals Love Airlines (and other not exactly helpful bits of advice about love)

**Author's Note:**

> Day 21: See  
> 1, 842 words
> 
> Yes. Yes I took the "bitches love airlines" Inception meme and twisted it so Saito thinks "attractive dream criminals love airlines." Mostly so I could get Cobb to look confused.

These are the times that everyone saw something that should have been fucking obvious to either Arthur or Eames.

Cobb

Cobb hadn’t been having a good day. He was attempting to make it day by day, dealing with Mal being gone, and his projection of Mal being gone, too. It made his dreams lonely, but safer. He’d already dismantled the prison he had used to keep Mal trapped in his memories. He broke the elevator, each setting or location, and each house or apartment. The hardest level had been the basement, but he’d managed it.

He liked to get into the office early now, and since he’d finally let go of Mal, he didn’t need to dream with the PASIV like he used to. He was well rested and eager to get back to work.

He even brought the coffee and donuts as a surprise!

When he got to the office Arthur was the only one there, but he was busy preparing for the arrival of the others, particularly Eames.

Cobb didn’t know that Arthur put this much effort into preparing a workstation, but it seemed that Arthur made it a point that everyone had enough materials at their desks or locations within the worksite.

Ariadne had a supply of the foam blocks she liked to use for basic model building.

Yusuf had clean beakers and test tubes, and racks to put everything in. Cobb was almost sure that Arthur had made sure they were clean himself by actually _washing them_.

Cobb’s own work space had fresh pens and paper, little notebooks similar to Arthur’s moleskins but bigger.

But Arthur paid the most attention to Eames’s desk. Arthur made sure that the file folder that was already much thicker than everyone else’s got to be in the center of the desk. Plenty of pens, reference materials, dictionaries or language guides, and once Arthur spotted Cobb, the point man selected a donut that Eames liked and left it covered on a plate for him at his desk.

Cobb stared at him and noticed that he hadn’t done that for anyone else, but came back to select a donut for himself. When he noticed Cobb staring he asked him what was up. Cobb just shrugged and said, “I don’t know, it just feels like it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you do the whole morning routine thing around the warehouse. It’s kind of nice to be here early enough to see it.”

Arthur smiled at Cobb. “It’s good to see that you’re living in the moment now and don’t just check in to make a brilliant comment.”

Ariadne 

She was busy. They all were busy. But while she was building another piece of the model she didn’t have to hide from Cobb anymore, or not ask a single question about because the crazy projection of his dead wife would learn it and ruin everything because that was the only thing she did aside from making Cobb question whether or not his reality was true.

She heard something that wasn’t all that unusual. It was Eames flirting with Arthur.

It was something Eames did regularly, and for the life of her she hadn’t been able to decide if it was something that either man was taking seriously or if it was some kind of game they played to pass the time on a slow day like today.

Arthur was seated at his desk in front of his laptop, but he wasn’t strictly focusing on the screen like he would have normally. No, the man was smiling up at Eames! Did he even realize he was doing it?

And Eames was leaning over Arthur’s desk and purring something to the point man about...donuts?

“-you must truly love me, Arthur. You scored me a jelly donut.”

Arthur shook his head, still smiling. “I did no such thing, Mr. Eames. Perhaps it was the donut fairy.”

Both men were laughing at the stupid joke (but if she were being real, Ariadne wouldn’t mind a visit from the donut fairy, she’d been super disappointed when she got the office and realized that the last glazed twist had been taken).

But she took notice that Arthur didn’t move his hand away or complain when Eames laid his own atop it. Was it just her or did Arthur look a bit flushed?

Saito

Saito had many more important things to do than visit a team he employed for one of the most important business things in well...ever. He supposed that if he phrased it like that he would have to meet with them because of all the work they had done to increase his power and influence when Robert Fischer finally separated his father’s company.

Cobb’s team had done exactly as he said they would.

So since Saito was in the area, he came by their newest office (easy for Saito’s men to find despite the safeguards Arthur put in place) and knocked on the door.

It opened, but only because two of the dream criminals from Cobb’s team (a regular and one who had been sought out in Mombasa, the one Saito had sort of started a friendship with after the events of Robert Fischer’s inception) were on their way out.

“Hello, Mr. Eames,” Saito greeted Eames first, then Arthur. “Hello to you as well, Mr. Arthur.”

Both men looked surprised to see him, but they dealt with it gracefully. “I hope you don’t have another inception for us,” Eames quipped. “Arthur and I were just off to lunch.”

“For the team?”

Arthur and Eames shared a look, a secret humorous look that Saito might not have caught if he hadn’t had that look directed at him once before by Eames. Way down on the third level, Eames had smiled at him saying “Nonsense” in response to a dying Saito’s statement of “No room for tourists on these jobs.”

Of course, Mr. Eames wasn’t in love with him like he _obviously_ was with Arthur.

Now he definitely had something to talk to Cobb about now.

“We’re just popping out to get something for ourselves actually. The others didn’t seem too hungry.”

Saito nodded and accepted Eames’s words at face value. They were going to lunch, whether they knew they were in love or not. Maybe they were too close to see it.

“That is okay, gentlemen. I was in the area and thought to check on Mr. Cobb.”

Yusuf

“They’re acting kind of odd, aren’t they?”

Yusuf was busy mixing some chemicals together. He swore that people thought that his job was the same as baking. That dreamshare chemists could be compared to home bakers. He was certain that someone was going to someday ask for the compound and then add in a request for a tray of motherfucking brownies because he got not a single bit of respect for the careful, calculated work he did-

And then he spilled his chemicals and ruined what he was doing. It really pissed him off so he ripped off the gloves he was wearing and looked at Cobb, Ariadne, and of all people, Saito.

“Arthur and Eames are always odd. You can count on them to be odd. Please leave me alone so I can do my job and make a paycheck.”

Cobb’s eyes narrowed. “I gave you all of my pay from the Fischer job, so you shouldn’t care about this paycheck just yet.”

“Sweet burn,” Ariadne commented. “But then it’s kind of weak because it reminds all of us how you were desperate enough to almost land all of us in Limbo when you didn’t inform us about the dangers of sedation.”

“I apologized for that,” Cobb replied without flinching. “I’m fine. You’re fine. All of us got out of that fine.”

“I also got out fine,” Saito added because it was true and he liked to be involved in the conversation.

“Look,” Yusuf said to break up the whole discussion. “I really don’t care about it. They’ll be back from lunch soon, so you can all just bugger off.”

“But I think that they need to realize that we see it,” Cobb said.

“That they’re being stupid?”

“That they’re in love but don’t know it,” all three of them said to Yusuf’s face.

Yusuf looked from face to face. They were serious about this. Like, really serious. It wasn’t like any of them to stick their noses into someone else’s business, expect maybe for Ariadne, but she never tried to set Cobb up with another team member, so Yusuf wasn’t sure.

Arthur and Eames had finally entered the room, laughing at something one or the other said. And once Yusuf looked at them, he could sort of see what the rest of them were getting at. They looked happy, but didn’t seem to notice that any of this was happening.

Yusuf glanced at the rest of the team who were pro- Arthur and Eames gotta know they’re in love, please help us achieve this Yusuf! (A long name, but who cared, it wasn’t like anyone was going to make banners or buttons).

They clearly wanted him to take care of this and break the news to Arthur and Eames.

Finally Yusuf decided to do it the best way he could. Perhaps the truest and most honest way he could.

Bluntly.

“Hey, you idiots don’t seem to notice it, but you’re head over heels for each other. You’re making me sick with how cute you both are. To save the rest of these people here, I’m politely, to a point, politely, informing you of your current situation so you can take care of it by...” Yusuf wasn’t sure what the next step would be really. How did one resolve this sort of thing?

Thankfully the others helped out by offering advice that wasn’t helpful, merely stuff that referred to things they’d gone through.

“You shouldn’t fuck with your totems if you ever get stuck in Limbo. If you love each other you’ll patiently wait for the god damned timer to go off and retain your sanity while stuck there. And maybe get married, but that’s just my thoughts, you don’t have to do that,” Cobb said.

“Own up to being the donut fairy, Arthur! You did that to make Eames happy, and if you want to go the extra mile for somebody then you must care, because _I_ didn’t get a special donut saved for me and I’m sad. I’m going to the corner now you lovesick bastard!” Ariadne said before retreating to a corner to work like a proper dream criminal who was bitter over the donut that got away.

Finally, Saito politely stepped forwards as Arthur and Eames gaped at the group.

“You could buy him an airline, Mr. Eames. Impossibly attractive dream criminals love airlines.”

Cobb’s eyes widened. “Excuse me, what?”

It took maybe a minute for the shock to wear off, then Eames and Arthur turned to each other and said “Really?” and “But you never said anything, love...” before they totally started kissing.


End file.
